Sacrifice
Only you can prevent global, eternal happiness. Cast * Sam Yao * Jamie Skeet * Moonchild * Janine De Luca * Paula Cohen * Simon Lauchlan * Maxine Myers * Veronica McShell * Moonchild's Dad Plot 10 Minutes Till The World Ends Even if Moonchild dies today, if she manages to send the signal, the first person to crack her control tone code will be able to take over where she left off. Run For Your Life Moonchild applies a neural net in order to use her brain to programme the ZRD. This will kill her - and you, if you have to send a countermand signal. Get After Moonchild Moonchild’s dad’s voice echoes out; she loses her concentration, and you take her down. Simon volunteers his brain to break Moonchild’s mind control. That Zipline's Waiting Moonchild slips and falls; she instructs you to tell Veronica to cross reference her seeds at the museum before falling to her death. This Is Going To Sting An emotional Janine says farewell to Simon, who is connected to the ZRD system. He lets out a scream of excruciating agony as the signal is transmitted. The Threat Of Being Happy Forever Is Gone You dodge falling masonry as aftershocks from the tower shake the city. Paula, Janine and Sam receive reports confirming that the signal seems to have worked. A Cure For The Zombie Plague Janine proposes a toast to all Runners. As they drink, a message comes through from Veronica - there may be a cure for the zombie plague. Transcript explosion SAM YAO: That’s it! The self-destruct sequence has started. JAMIE SKEET: A place like this is going to take a while to go down. I’ve got a good view from where I am. Looks like the designers placed the charges to take out the main supporting struts. Not much good for Moonchild, either. Even if she sends her signal, she’ll never get to use it. No way she’s getting out of her alive. AMELIA SPENS: And do we know what happens if she manages to send the signal but not use it? PAULA COHEN: She still changes everyone. She still makes us all happy, all the time, no matter what happens, no matter what anyone does to us or what we do to anyone else. JANINE DE LUCA: And everyone in the world will be susceptible to mind control. Any individual who is able to crack the code and replicate Moonchild’s tone generation will have absolute power. MAXINE MYERS: So let’s not let that happen. JAMIE SKEET: Any sign of Runner Three? JANINE DE LUCA: I think we have to presume it was he who told Moonchild where Runner Five was heading. SAM YAO: That’s a bit - ! JANINE DE LUCA: His recce yesterday? Rather reminiscent of his long runs to visit Professor Van Ark. SAM YAO: But selling us out to Moonchild? JANINE DE LUCA: We have to presume that, Mister Yao. MAXINE MYERS: Five, I’m setting up your way back here. I am guarding it with my life. PAULA COHEN: And also guarding your life with your life? MAXINE MYERS: We are all coming back. We’re coming home. This is going to work. AMELIA SPENS: Runner Five, I have the sound linkup prepared for you. There are speakers on the far edge of the roof. They must have been intended to play music for the roller coaster. You’ll need to connect my device there. MAXINE MYERS: And then you’ll have to be close to Moonchild when we broadcast. We’re only going to get one shot at this. SAM YAO: Um, now, how is Moonchild going to broadcast the signal? I mean, shouldn’t there be like, a giant satellite dish or something? Because I can’t actually see a massive satellite dish. MAXINE MYERS: I don’t know. Maybe it’s on another building. Wherever it is, you have to stop Moonchild accessing it before the satellites align and she can transmit her signal to everyone. We’ve got ten minutes until the world ends! JANINE DE LUCA: That’s it, Runner Five. You’ve found the speaker input. Now plug in Miss Spens’ device. When we broadcast, if it works, it needs to sound like it’s coming from everywhere. AMELIA SPENS: I’m ready when you are. feedback squeals MOONCHILD: Oh, Runner Five, it’s you! I had a feeling you were always meant to be here. This is my last day, Five. And your last day, too. It’s the last time any of us will have to suffer. It’s so right that you’re here. JANINE DE LUCA: She appears to be putting a neural net on her head. Doctor Cohen, any ideas? PAULA COHEN: I don’t think that’s a neural net. I’ve been speaking to Professor Downes. We never did know how Moonchild planned to control the ZRD. There’s no obvious interface. But apparently, before the apocalypse, Comansys had been working on an entirely new operating system. The research was supposedly discontinued, but I suspect Moonchild carried on in secret. I think she has a method for passing her signal through the ZRD. SAM YAO: Which is? MOONCHILD: I’ve always had a special destiny. I’ve always known it. I was meant to give my life to save the world. PAULA COHEN: She’s going to use her own brain as wetware to program the ZRD. It’ll fry her, no doubt about that. That’s why the research was terminated. There was never any way to do it without killing the subject. SAM YAO: And does that mean that if Runner Five doesn’t - JANINE DE LUCA: If Runner Five wants to send a countermand signal, Five’s brain will also be destroyed. SAM YAO: That’s – you have to get there to stop her sending the signal, Five. growls MAXINE MYERS: What the - ? What are those? MOONCHILD: Did you think I wouldn’t have a trick or two up my sleeve? Welcome the new fast zombies. Not just fast - agile, fine motor control, and sophisticated tool use. MAXINE MYERS: They’re – those are zombie fighters. They’re after you, Five! SAM YAO: One of them’s got nunchucks! MAXINE MYERs: Five, run. Run for your life! growl SAM YAO: Five! There’s one with a sword going for your left leg! You’ve got it. They just don’t stop. That one fell twenty stories, and it’s just climbing back up! AMELIA SPENS: You’re nearly there, Five. The world is depending on you. And we’re just about ready. And so is Moonchild. MAXINE MYERS: What the hell is that? SAM YAO: Oh my God. That’s the satellite dish. MAXINE MYERS: It always was a bit weird that Comansys installed a giant roller coaster on the roof of their main office building. Weird even for them. SAM YAO: It’s – well, the loop-the-loops are closing up. There are bits sliding into place. MAXINE MYERS: Always has been the biggest broadcasting station in the world, waiting for today. PAULA COHEN: Moonchild’s hooked into the ZRD, and she’s using her tone box to control the zombies, too. I don’t know how she’s got the concentration. MAXINE MYERS: Fully deployed. That’s your cue, Five. We just need to break her focus, just for a moment. MOONCHILD: There will be no suffering. There will be no pain. We shall all be happy, now and forever. JANINE DE LUCA: Sixty seconds until the satellites are in alignment. Now, Miss Spens! AMELIA SPENS: Now, Five, be ready to take her. plays MOONCHILD’S FATHER: Cynthia? Isn’t that you, darling little bobotie? Is it you? What are you doing? MOONCHILD: Dad? MOONCHILD’S FATHER: Is that my little pickled herring? MOONCHILD: Daddy? JANINE DE LUCA: Now, Runner Five! Take her down now! Five struggles with MOONCHILD MOONCHILD: No! What are you doing? No! SAM YAO: That’s it, Five, hold her down! MOONCHILD: I can make you happy, Runner Five. I can make everyone happy! SIMON LAUCHLAN: Yeah, I’ve heard that one before. JANINE DE LUCA: Simon! Runner Three. You are interfering with an important operation. Runner Five, well done. You’ve secured Moonchild, now destroy the Zombie Repelling Device. We cannot allow that thing to be used. SIMON LAUCHLAN: And what happens to all the people already under Moonchild’s thumb if you do that? PAULA COHEN: Well, the likelihood is they’ll remain pliable. Probably unable to care for themselves without constant input from Moonchild. SIMON LAUCHLAN: So everyone in New Canton, everyone in London, no better than a zom for the rest of their lives? SAM YAO: At least we’ve stopped it happening to anyone else. SIMON LAUCHLAN: That’s not good enough. The satellites are still aligned. We can send the signal, cure everyone! That’s what we came all this way for, isn’t it? SAM YAO: Yeah, but it’d burn out Runner Five’s brain. Five, it’s okay. Destroy the ZRD. The building’s going to be gone in a few minutes. There’ll be no other opportunity to send the signal. Bring Moonchild back to us. We can use her tech know-how if she’s not completely crackers. SIMON LAUCHLAN: Doesn’t have to be Five’s brain. Mine hasn’t ever done anything good for me anyway. SAM YAO: Simon, you’ll die. SIMON LAUCHLAN: Yeah, yeah. That’s the plan! JANINE DE LUCA: It’ll be excruciating, Simon. MOONCHILD: Get off me! SAM YAO: Five, get after Moonchild. We can’t let her escape! SIMON LAUCHLAN: You go, Five. Run! SAM YAO: Man, the building’s sort of folding up. Looks like it’s eating itself alive. JAMIE SKEET: Yeah, time for me to get out of here. Roller guards have turned up just in time. NATASHA CRASHER: We weren’t going to just leave you here, Your Maj. JAMIE SKEET: laughs Took your bloody time about it, didn’t you? JANINE DE LUCA: Amelia appears to have made her own arrangements. And you’re almost on Moonchild, Five, just keep going! MAXINE MYERS: I’ve got a zip line secured for you here when you have her. MOONCHILD: Man, this is severely uncool! SAM YAO: You’re nearly got her! She’s not even looking where she’s going! MOONCHILD: I was going to make the whole world happy, Five. Everyone! And now I’m going to have to find another way to do it. shouts SAM YAO: She’s tripped! She’s hanging onto a girder. You’ve got to get her now, Five! Just lean over and pull her up. JANINE DE LUCA: A lot of people want to ask that woman a lot of questions. MOONCHILD: Five, did you know it takes five days to brew ayahuasca? I always thought that was super significant. You and me, like water and tea. We need each other to really be something. JANINE DE LUCA: Just pull her up, Five! SAM YAO: Look, she’s not letting Five take her hand. MOONCHILD: You know, jumping from high places - it’s been a problem since the beginning with my process. You’ve seen it. Francesca, Miranda. A minority of subjects throw themselves off buildings. My dad did that in the end, and I never understood why. But now I think I do. Look down, Five. Really look. You know why they say you shouldn’t look down when you’re climbing? It’s not because it’ll scare you. It’s because it’ll make you want to fall. SAM YAO: Oh, for God’s sake, take Runner Five’s hand! JANINE DE LUCA: She can’t hear you. MOONCHILD: Look at that view! All the millions of homes, and people, and lives! All of the trees, and blades of grass, and insects, and zombies. All of it in one glance. If you go into that, you’ll be at one with everything. MAXINE MYERS: The zip line’s secure, Five. If you get here, there’s an extra harness for Moonchild. MOONCHILD: You know, the more I think about it, the more everything happened exactly as it should. Shooting down your helicopter – I didn’t know why they wanted me to do that. I just did it because they said they had an underground lab for me, and would give me the keys if I just shot down this one little helicopter. I didn’t think I’d be meeting you, that yours was the face my death would wear. I would have sacrificed everything. But it hasn’t gone down that way. Maybe I can’t make everyone happy. But I can make myself happy. SAM YAO: You can’t wait any longer, Five. JANINE DE LUCA: We know what she’s doing! MOONCHILD: Just one thing, Five. Tell Veronica to go deep into the archives of the Natural History Museum. Tell her to look for what’s cross-referenced with those seeds. She’s a clever girl. She’ll go far. Now your aura’s all gold, do you know that, Five? Gold like the sun. We’re both heading in the same direction, man. But I bet I’ll get there first. Race you! SAM YAO: Oh God. She let go. Why’d she do that? JANINE DE LUCA: I don’t think I even know why I do things, Mister Yao, let alone anyone else. I don’t know why Simon… Five, that zip line’s waiting for you. You’ve got to get there before the building collapses. Run! MAXINE MYERS: Here, Five, quickly. Clip this on. SIMON LAUCHLAN: Okay, Jenny. Am I good to go? JANINE DE LUCA: Are you certain? SIMON LAUCHLAN: It’s penance, isn’t it? I think it is. I think this might actually count. JANINE DE LUCA: It’s the right thing to do, Simon. You’re doing the right thing. SIMON LAUCHLAN: laughs I love you too, babes! JANINE DE LUCA: The ZRD system will connect through your cerebellum in three - MAXINE MYERS: Okay, I’m jumping. JANINE DE LUCA: Two - MYERS clips into zip line and screams as she falls SIMON LAUCHLAN: This is going to sting! SAM YAO: Jump, Five! Five clips into zip line and silently falls JANINE DE LUCA: One - LAUCHLAN screams explosion JANINE DE LUCA: Confirmed. The ZRD signal is being transmitted. SAM YAO: Five, that building’s coming down now. You’ve got to get out of there. Run! JANINE DE LUCA: It’s rather – in a way, it’s rather pretty, you know. The building coming down. Rather graceful. A good death. SAM YAO: Yeah. Five and Maxine, you need to keep moving. There are aftershocks, loose masonry falling. laughs Can’t go through all this and then get clonked on the head by a falling pub sign, right? MAXINE MYERS: We can’t keep going much longer, Sam. Five and I are covered in cuts and contusions - SAM YAO: It’s okay, only a bit more to go. The Ministry is sending a Jeep for you. Five, [laughs[ they reckon they’re going to ask you to stay on in London, help with the reconstruction. Apparently the uh, King likes you. MAXINE MYERS: laughs I don’t think that’s going to happen. Do we know if what Simon did – do we know if the signal worked? PAULA COHEN: Something happened. We’ve got reports from runners in the field that the Dedlocks have just fallen over, like they’re sleeping. JANINE DE LUCA: Message from Tony to say that one member of his crew is confused, but back to normal. SAM YAO: I’ve had Ed on the ham radio to me already. He’s coming back home to Molly. Misses Sosa’s also – yeah, she’s really grateful for what we’ve done for her and her kids. And Nadia says that a bunch of the New Canton people guarding treetop base have just sat down. They’re disoriented, she says. Confused. MAXINE MYERS: So something happened. PAULA COHEN: We’ll need more research to determine exactly what has happened, but it looks like the threat of us all being “happy forever” is gone. MAXINE MYERS: That reminds me. Um, love? When I get back… you always wanted to start a family, right? PAULA COHEN: You know I can’t. Still half zombie. MAXINE MYERS: We’ll have to fix that sometime. But in the meantime, I can. PAULA COHEN: But you never wanted to – I mean - MAXINE MYERS: Apparently apocalypses have a way of changing your mind. Besides, we never had the right donor before. I know how close the two of you got while I was away, and Sam and I have talked it over. SAM YAO: Oh! I uh - I um - oh, I thought we’d discuss this privately. PAULA COHEN: We will. We will, we will! SAM YAO: Keep on going, Five. Keep on going, Maxine. You’re nearly there. engine starts JAMIE SKEET: Hey, Five, over this way! Thought I’d do the victory lap with you, Five. You and the doc only saved the bloody world! SAM YAO: Again. JAMIE SKEET: Yeah! Getting to be a habit with you. I hear you’ve turned down the offer to become the head of the Royal Rollers and Runners. Don’t blame you. Got to find a place that feels like home. JANINE DE LUCA: We all need that. Someone or something that feels like home. Moonchild had it wrong. There are things deeper and more important than happiness. Duty, sacrifice, doing what you know to be right, and to protect your home and the people who live there, whatever it takes. SAM YAO: Hey, Janine. I think Jack and Eugene left an emergency bottle of Lagavulin in the bottom drawer there. This is the time to break it out, if ever there was one, I think. JANINE DE LUCA: Yes, I think I could do with a stiff drink. SAM YAO: To Simon. Alright? Came out okay in the end. JANINE DE LUCA: To all the runners. Running and fallen. To all of them. SAM YAO: Yeah, to them. clink And you know, I did think I saw someone. Someone burned, standing up, walking from the wreckage of the tower. It could have been - JANINE DE LUCA: For his sake, I hope it wasn’t. May the dead stay dead. SAM YAO: Yeah. laughs If they’d just done that from the start, we’d all have been okay. Hey, Five, message from Bernard. They want you to consider coming over to head up their reconstruction efforts for a few months. Yeah, looks like you’ll be getting quite a few offers like - static VERONICA MCSHELL: Sam? Sam Yao? Doctor Myers? Runner Five, are you receiving me? SAM YAO: Yeah, we can hear you, Veronica. Are you okay? Natural History Museum okay? VERONICA MCSHELL: Oh, oh yes, everything’s fine. What your runner did worked out very well. Misses Evans is back to her usual self – well, she’s a bit embarrassed. No, listen. I looked up that reference Moonchild gave to Runner Five, cross-referencing from the seeds. I think – my Old English isn’t very good, and I haven’t had time to build a working translator, but - JANINE DE LUCA: Is this very urgent, Miss McShell? VERONICA MCSHELL: It might be. I think there’s – there seems to be an account of something that sounds like a zombie outbreak about one thousand seven hundred years ago. And they talk about some magic they did to stop people from becoming walking dead. If it’s real – if it really happened - SAM YAO: Then there might be a cure. VERONICA MCSHELL: A cure for the zombie plague, yes. Codex Artefact Wadded Up Note This fell from Moonchild`s pocket. It looks old, like she`s been carrying it around for ages. Darling Cynthia, I'm so proud of you. First day of university. I`ve always known you could do it, darling. You`ve worked so hard for this, and you deserve all the success and accolades that I know are going to be drawn toward you like iron filings to an electro-magnet.' My little bobtie, there are so may things I would have done differently if I`d had the chance. I neverr had the oppertunities you`ve had, no one ever saw anything special in me. But it`s going to be different for you. You`re going to do all the things I never could, and more.' We named you after the moon for a reason, your mum and me. It`s because we knew people would be drawn to you, that you`d have an effect on the world, that you could be the one to turn the tide. And you will. This is just the start.'''' -All my love Dad. Letter A Royal Decree from His Highness, the King of England to his Royal Subject Runner Five - you really saved our bacon back there, you and the doc. Looks like I would’ve slowed you down in the end. I wish Archie could’ve seen this, Five. I’d like to know what she’d say about that mental rollercoaster satellite dish thing. She'd probably have wanted to use it to broadcast tunes to boogie to! Janine said I should give you a title. But I’m not really doing that knighthood and damehood thing. I can give you a couple of acres of Balmoral if you can make it up there though, ‘cause I certainly don’t need them all. I hope that’ll do you for now. - Jamie P.S. Alice wants you to know that her invitation to the Rollerguard is always open, if you ever change your mind. Category:Mission Category:Season Three Category:Letters